Home Truths
by Kanna-Ophelia
Summary: Draco discovers the true source of his own devastating charm.


**~Home Truths~**

**_Characters belong to J.K. Rowling, not me. This is merely fanfiction._**

**_For my sweet Floria, who I knew would find it amusing. The last paragraph especially is for her._**

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**_And also dedicated to all those wonderfully in-character Draco writers out there._****__**

Draco thought of himself as a particularly perceptive young man, as well as an intelligent and cunning one. That being so, he was mildly shocked with himself that his suspicions had dawned so late, if it was possible for dawn to occur in late afternoon.

All the clues were there.  His mother's silvery-golden hair, the charm she radiated on those few occasions where she was not bored and out of sorts. She could bring a riot to a standstill with a smile, as her guests basked in her glowing beauty.  Not that she displayed this ability at all frequently, but that was merely a sign of admirable Slytherin cunning.  Charm was a resource not to be idly wasted, and behaving like a discontented cow was a quite appropriate demeanour to adopt in familial relationships.

And then, of course, there was the fact that Narcissa was Draco's mother. And he was, after all, his mother's child.  Beauty… er, heterosexual masculine appeal… blonde hair, amazing charm… He had to inherit it from somewhere, and his father was not nearly glamorous enough to explain his prominent charms.

Despite this, it was not until he saw Narcissa float down into the garden in a cloud of moonlight hair that Draco realised the truth of his heritage.

He turned to fly down the steps himself, to share the exciting revelation with his mother,  and crashed into his father instead. He was mildly surprised that it was not, in fact, Lucius that Narcissa had gone to meet, but in the excitement of the revelation, he was more concerned with expression than analysis.

"Father! My mother is part-Veela!" he burst out.

Lucius sighed, which seemed an odd response. "Yes, Draco, she is."

It took all Draco's sense of dignity not to jump up and down like a small child.    
"No wonder Ginny Weasley would pretends to find me annoying! She probably has wet dreams about bearing my red-headed children!  And Harry… he thinks he fools me, hiding his desire under a veneer of contempt! Ron wants me bad, too, I can tell.   And Crabbe and Goyle would do anything to protect me.  And Snape! No wonder he gives me such good grades," he beamed. Everything made sense now. Yes, most people pretended to think he was scum.  Granted, Pansy and the lads ostentatiously accepted sums of ready money for his father in return for keeping Draco company, but that was obviously in order to make their desire to be his closest friends seem more natural and Slytherinish.  They were probably embarrassed by the intensity of their hero worship and lust.

Draco had always known, deep in his heart, that he could not be as unpopular as superficial appearances suggested.  On some level, he'd always known that everyone wanted to get into his pants. And now, he knew the source of his own irresistible appeal.

He surfaced from a daydream of himself and Hermione as Head Girl and Head Boy, well, the other way around, actually, and late-night discussions of… Head Person-ish issues… to realise that his father was speaking to him, even more unpleasantly than usual.  

"Draco, do you have to make more of a fool of yourself than is strictly necessary?" 

Draco pouted. Well, not quite pouted. He simmered sexily in an undeniably masculine way, in harmony with his manly beauty. "Well? It's true, is it not? I have Veela blood?"

Lucius looked uncomfortable, and tried to cover it up by staring down the length of his own nose.  "Possibly.  Quite possibly."

Draco clung to his father, something repeated kicks had pretty much driven out of him by the age of three.  But this was a desperate moment. "I need to find her. I need to more deeply access and train my preternatural skills. Father, why didn't you ever tell me?"

Lucius rolled his eyes back in his head. "I can't do this anymore. It's pathetic.  How did I offend thee, Lord Voldemort, to be cursed with a son like this?"

"Er, Father? I don't think You-Know-Who is actually, er, generally associated with childbirth or anything," Draco tentatively suggested, even though his upbringing was screaming that putting any kind of limits on Voldemort's power was blasphemous.  At least he had not actually voiced the dread name.  With luck, Voldemort would never know that Draco didn't consider him to be the goddess of childbirth.

"Silence! You know not what you say he is... not." Lucius looked confused for a moment, and then extricated himself from his own muddled syntax. "Nevertheless, it is time you learned the truth, if for nothing else than to prevent you driving me insane with your vain delusions. Draco, listen carefully.  Your mother is not your mother."

Draco looked uneasy. "Is this some kind of a word puzzle?" He would not have put it past the old bas… gentleman, to hit him with word games at a moment like this.

"I mean Narcissa is not your mother!" Lucius thundered.

Draco looked confused. "Then why do I have Veela blood?"

"You don't!" Lucius added something that Draco carefully did not hear, for fear of soiling his innocent baby-Death Eater mind.

"But… But…." Tears began to well in his eyes. "Who _is my real mother, then?" Maybe all was not lost. Maybe his real mother was some tragically beautiful, fabulously powerful witch, who had bequeathed him human beauty, charm and talent.  After all, maybe he didn't actually want to be a mixed-breed. That was only a step above a Mudblood, when you really thought about it.  And maybe his real mother wasn't such a sour b -  maybe she was a woman lacking Narcissa's strength of personality. "You're still my father, aren't you?" he asked hopefully, although he would not have admitted under Verisateum exactly what answer he was hoping for._

"Unfortunately, yes." Lucius leaned against the stair rail and closed his eyes. "Maybe it's beyond time I explained a few facts to you."

Draco listened carefully.  Some facts seemed to have difficulty entering his divinely blond but not quite Veela-ish head, although that was less from lack of intelligence than desperate rejection of the facts.  "My m-mother is a Muggle?"

"It is traditional among the old families that, when a wife is unable – or unwilling," he added somewhat bitterly – "to produce an heir, then Muggles are put to good use, like the cattle they are.  It is quite a common practice among the oldest wizarding families.  The blood must go on."

"Then – I'm a M-M-Mudblood?"

"How dare you? Do you not know that the blood of the Malfoys is more powerful than the genes of a mere Muggle? Do you realise what an insult that offers me?  She was merely a breeding receptacle.  You are as pureblood as I am!"

"Oh." Draco blinked back his tears. "I see. Er, Father?"

Lucius, who was already striding away, turned back with a  long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Draco?"

"Can I meet my real mother?"

Lucius winced. "You would be happier not to.  She resides in a Muggle facility for, ah, the mentally incapable."

"Oh." Draco sniffed, not daring to ask if his mother was unstable or merely half-witted. "Why did you choose her as my mother, may I ask?"

"She had everything required in a Muggle woman."

"Oh?"

"Childbearing hips." Lucius finally escaped, in a swirl of robes that was really more dramatic than such an exit line actually required. Lucius, Draco reflected morosely, sometimes seemed born in the wrong millennium, let alone century.

He wiped his eyes and tried to assimilate the facts.  So… his adoring mother was not really his mother, but a Veela who had entrapped his father into marriage by her inhuman charms, and then, apparently, stopped bothering to use them.  He supposed he could live with that, as long as her life continued to revolve around him. Although he was, actually, somewhat curious as to actually who it was she was meeting with her Veela charm turned full-on.

He slowly made his way down into the garden.

A few moments later, Draco was barricading himself in his room, and swearing that not even a full team of Aurors could drag him out of the door. Ever, ever again.

Down in the garden of Malfoy Manor, Narcissa's lover broke a deep, searching kiss, to ask dazedly, "Did you hear anything, love?"

Narcissa, glowing with Veela stardust, shook her lovely head, causing butterflies to burst into song in the darkened shrubbery. "Not a thing, dearest."

"Good," said Molly, and pulled Narcissa's mouth to hers once more.

**~end~**


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